Coaches when did you know, to move forward or quit?

Triathlon Forum
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A while ago there was a thread where an athlete asked when poster realised they were “done” racing.
Based on my yearly reflection, I’d like to ask the equivalent for coaches — not burnout, not disinterest, but a deeper misalignment with certain coaching realities.
Sorry its a bit long.

Where to go

I’ve coached endurance and multisport athletes for almost two decades. My core focus has always been performance-driven amateurs and developing elites — short-course and long-course.

What has kept me in coaching isn’t weekly spreadsheets, accountability, or policing. It’s the strategic planning, building a holistic triathlon framework, coordinating a team around the athlete, feedback loops, biomechanics, load management, behavioural analysis, emotional regulation, and trying to understand the human behind the athlete — helping them become a more grounded, capable version of themselves.

I gravitate toward complex athletes: highly-driven but sensitive, asymmetrically developed, or with long injury histories requiring careful reconstruction. That’s where coaching feels alive. But something is shifting, and I’m still exploring it. Part of it is moving from being a coach who “knows a bit about everything” to someone who outsources to specialists when the athlete has the structure and budget for it. My focus on elite performers has sharpened, and while I still coach amateurs I genuinely enjoy, I only want to work with those who show real grit and commitment.

This year brought a new type of frustration and it has also left me empty . I failed with the closest-to-ideal athlete I’ve ever coached. Not due to lack of knowledge — but execution. In a complicated environment (federation noise, athlete-specific constraints), I misread key moments in timing and communication. Driven by urgency to close a performance gap and by low signalling from the athlete, I tried to move faster than they were ready to move. That exposed gaps in my coaching practice that still need refinement. I take full responsibility — the mix of external noise and my own misplaced urgency clarified the bottlenecks I need to improve, and I’m motivated to do so.

I’m noticing some clear shifts:

• I still enjoy coaching — but only when the athlete is “real.”
By “real,” I mean engaged, curious, reflective, structurally disciplined, and capable of behavioural change. I’m no longer interested in predictable age-group patterns, identity-chasing behaviour, or athletes whose issues require a psychologist more than a coach. Surface-level coaching and chronic hand-holding create overcoaching, frustration, and preventable failure.

• I now decline roughly 80% of inquiries.
Not from arrogance — from pattern recognition. After years in the field, you can see performance ceilings, behavioural contradictions, emotional loops, fragility, and the gap between desire and behaviour. I used to take on athletes like this to “fix” the system. Now I know it wastes everyone’s time.

• I prefer working with elite performers.
Not exclusively — there are amateurs I enjoy working with — but the effort–income mismatch with developing elites is real. High-performance coaching demands long-term development thinking, team management, deep data interpretation, micro-periodisation, injury-risk control, biomechanical correction, and communication at a depth most athletes never consciously perceive. The time and emotional investment is high and meaningful, but rarely matched financially. I tend to give more than I get back.
• For the first time this year i noticed after a race i was coaching that i was tired, my friend would say its because i did run more than the atheltes, but it was more emotional and some frustration that left me shattered for a while.

• I still love witnessing improvement — in athletes and in myself.
In my internal coaching model, I’d place myself at Tier 3 :

Tier 1 — world class (Lorang, Sousa, and maybe 10–12 others)
Tier 2 — truly elite
Tier 3 — strong elite traits, with clear bottlenecks still present
Tier 8 — social media coach

This framework is just my internal model, not a universal ranking. I know my bottlenecks and am willing to address them, if I keep going But I’m no longer willing to dilute myself across athletes who don’t match my drive. I cannot coach athletes who expect high-performance outcomes without high-performance behaviours. Give me a beginner with elite discipline over an experienced athlete with elite excuses — every time.

Too be challenged at work is important to me, and while i notice I need more and more elite atheltes for that , one of my favorite projects was to get one swimmer to make the kona cut off. Its was a complex challenging case and that is totally fine.

Location is flexible and also something to consider . I can coach in English, German, and Spanish; Italy is also an option. But the real question isn’t geography — it’s direction.

So here’s what I’m curious about:

So basically i am wondering were iam going ?

For coaches who stepped away completely or radically re-specialised:
How did you know it was time to stop, take a sabbatical, or shift so sharply that it essentially became a new coaching identity? How did you redefine yourself?

Why did you change or quit?

• the effort–income mismatch?
• the shrinking tolerance for athletes who don’t genuinely want to improve?
• recognising that your best work only happens with certain personality types?
• realising you’re saying “no” far more than “yes”?
• the impact of a significant coaching failure?
• or the recognition that you no longer wanted to be a generalist — only a specialist or whatever, ie what was the trigger ?

Or did you just stay put ?

I’m trying to understand whether this phase is the beginning of the end of my coaching career — just year end fatique , or simply the natural evolution of outgrowing certain athletes and certain coaching models. Whether this is the moment to push for the next tier, or the moment to pivot.

Any thoughtful insights — from coaches who’ve experienced or thinking about this transition, or from athletes who have worked with coaches an feel like they have something to add — would be greatly appreciated. If you dont want to write in public please write a DM and i wont disclose any info.

PS I would like to keep this on the subject so for instance if you want to discuss my internal coaching rating tier system, or discuss who is a tier 1 or 2 coach please open a new topic. if you think iam a arrogant pr.ck please go to the cry like a This word is not allowed which means I'm not being very nice at the moment thread.

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Appreciate the vulnerability and self reflection it took to post this. I’ll be following the discussion for sure.

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thanks appreciate that !

also thanks to two coaches for their DM s

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I’m similiar in the athletes you work with, and one time an regular ole “age group” athlete asked me why I worked with this lady who was late 50’s, “slow”, if I was working with mostly pro development athletes. I kinda laughed, and told him…..I don’t coach “pro’s”, I don’t coach “age groupers”, I don’t coach “juniors”…..I coach “athletes”. If your goal and dedication match what I think can work, I’m going to work with you, whether that’s fast/slow/young/old. You can have people as dedicated to the sport and be MOP as you can “fast” athletes who try and cut corners and “want it” but don’t actually want to put in the work to want it.

All that to say, reflect on why you want to coach, and let that sorta be the compass to the direction you want to take. College triathlon here in the US, I think is potentially going to be a bigger and bigger option- whether ncaa pathway or collegiate club. College landscape is changing and I think club sports (w/ full time coach) is going to be more and more available. Could be a great way to get your foot in a solid location w/ s/b/r facilities and then have a daily pro training squad on the side.

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Blah, blah, blah… nobody cares. Do your job or don’t, coaching is not about you.

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very correct.
maybe I should write a call for action.

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Perfect advice there Paulo

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Are you a full time coach?
Why did you get into coaching originally?
When did you realize you were saying no more than yes?
When did you recognize that your “best work only happen with certain personality types?”
When did you start to become significantly frustrated with athletes who didn’t “genuinely want to improve?”

Tim

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This owl can’t believe how useless your reply is

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I’m very very fortunate to have had a coach for the last decade that has reflected a lot of the values you outline above as ones you hold. He coaches mainly athletes at the international level now. But I was probably in the ‘complex’ camp enough to keep him engaged, or more specifically the value that he was offering even before my stroke. And of course since then he’s been on a growth journey beside me as we’ve learnt what response we get from stimulus now, in a body that has been evolving in different ways (ageing in one direction and recovering in the other).
You identified communication being absolutely key, and that’s two way trust too. Not just about stuff directly related to the ‘plan’ but life too. And for me that doesn’t come easy.
I’ve not been an athletic coach, but in other areas of life I’ve walked on a few occasions where I’ve felt that I couldn’t justify to myself the value I was giving for the time/salary/title. Not been things I wanted to walk from but things I knew I needed to walk from to allow me to reset, refocus and recommit to a new goal/structure that was better aligned with where I was at the time.

No idea if there’s any wisdom in the above, probably not. But from the communication point, are you giving the opportunity for your athletes to communicate the broader value you are getting and are you really listening to that. If you are and they are and you feel you’ve the full picture and want to pivot, then that could be a wise decision. But there’s a lot of time we are failing to see the real value in what we do. When I had to take 6 months off work at zero notice, I was pretty sure where I was indispensable. When I came back it was a massive learning journey to me to find out where I had been most missed and so where my greatest value lay - and have now focussed to spend most of my time on those things, several I’d not realised I did at all as part of what I was doing. Be sure to know your value not your output.

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[quote=“SnappingT, post:8, topic:1294806”]

thanks!

Are you a full time coach?
yes

Why did you get into coaching originally?
Where I lived there were no coaches, so I stepped in. Over time I realised it wasn’t just filling a gap — I actually loved the work. I did loads of on deck coaching and really liked that, and went full time. (and while writing this i notice that since covid i do less on deck coaching i and my job satisfaction is certainly connected with that… )

When did you realize you were saying no more than yes?
Really about three years ago, but honestly almost from the beginning when i started full time. I never took on athletes who wanted to jump from the couch to an Ironman in a year.

When did you recognize that your “best work only happen with certain personality types?”
maybe 5 years into coaching, but really not too sure.

When did you start to become significantly frustrated with athletes who didn’t “genuinely want to improve?”
About two years into coaching, my ex told me, she could see it instantly when “Lazy Barry” called, she said, that with everybody i was engaged with, with “Lazy Barry” i was lost and totally frustrated.

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I disagree his reply is good

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thanks ! I will think about that.

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As with any phase in life you don’t want to retire away from something, you want to retire TO something else. Do you have something you can be excited about to move TO.

If not keep doing what you are doing as you may be more miserable going to something unknown just to get away from something you know. Maybe not having something to go TO makes you realize the good in what you have on the go. What you have on the go does not need to be exciting/interesting/rewarding all the time. Most professions, that cherry on top is infrequent, success points are not as quantified, and failures are ongoing things that are part of the grind. So celebrate the wins in what you are doing now (even if they are not what you want them to be), but first figure out the “what I am going TO” part. If not you will leave what you have and be miserable in what you go TO

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no, but i could move back to something I would earn more money in ,with a lot less emotional investment (and for sure very soon would be fed up with, but i could make it work, to do projects and then take time off to do other stuff)

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I think you need to figure out what you are going TO even if it is TO something you did in the past and figure out why that will be better for your life in general. The grass may be greener where you are NOW unless you figure out what the TO destination is like. Ejecting from where we are now is often not a good enough reason although it may seem to be.

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You’ve been on a long journey in the game and might just need a break, recharge and refresh. This time out may help answer your questions.

I’m at a similar point. If the athlete and theirs goals don’t excite me, I’m not the coach for them.

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The decision to step away from coaching was made for me when I moved to the other side of the world to live, and after reaching out that new country’s federation wouldn’t give me any equivalence for my coaching certifications and told me if I wanted to coach I had to start from scratch.

As coaching (in youth/draft legal development) was mostly a hobby for me (not my work that pays the bills) and I was doing it as a volunteer to give back to the sport, I didn’t feel the need to stay into it if I wasn’t wanted.

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thanks Rich !

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One more thiing to keep in mind in the vein of “the grass is not green enough HERE NOW…I need to move on”.

Every profession largely has 85% of stuff that is not really that fun, but from which we have to draw motivation from the process.

If you are doing a living coaching triathlon you are in the second tier of people “getting paid” for what people “pay to do”. Generally I have zero sympathy for pro athletes in any sport because they are in the blessed few in humanity who get paid to “just play” (and truly that is what it is compared to the factory workers, or the deckhand on an oil tanker, or a bricklayer…and so on).

If you are coaching you’re making a living having fun with people who are getting paid to have fun. It’s in the second layer but far from the deck hand on the tanker or the Infantry soldier.

All professions come with annoying stuff, administrative stuff, overhead, and dealing with annoying people. It’s just the way it is EVERYWHERE in every profession.

Being able to do a profession involving people play around in sport is a massive privilege (you have created that for yourself). Society does not need sport at all to put food on the table, so it is a nice to have layer in societies. Those who can make a living off all this “playing around” (vs being on the tanker, laying bricks, cranking an assembly line) are the privileged few on the planet. You may not see it this way, but it’s also why you can make a lot more money doing other professions that society needs to keep functioning (which is why it’s generally called work). You’re generating revenue off people playing. That’s awesome. The grass may be GREEN ENOUGH where you are now.

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